dog (Page 3)

Double-Nosed Dogs have long been popular in the Americansouth for their exceptional abilities at sniffing out smallgame, and now the breed’s abilities have caused it to beadopted by US HomelandSecurity as America’s official preferred dog for contrabandsniffing. As a result, Double Noses are increasingly beingseen in airports across the country, sniffing luggage fornarcotics, contraband and bombs. Many law enforcementagencies are adopting the breed as well, and theirfriendliness is making them popular with civilian owners,too. There are even plans to attempt the breeding of tripleand quadruple-nosed dogs, on the theory that they will beexponentially better sniffers.read more

We love those tiny lapdogs, but how did they get so small, anyway?

Soon after humans began domesticating dogs 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, they started breeding them small. Now scientists have identified a piece of doggy DNA that reduces the activity of a growth gene, ensuring that small breeds stay small. It’s next to a gene known as the IGF1 gene. Medium and large dogs also have the IGF1 gene, but they do not have the same piece of DNA next to it, so their size is not restricted by that DNA.
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Chewed, discarded bodies of dogs have been found for years in the Arizona desert. Now local sheriffs have learned these are pets that were stolen and used as “bait” in dog fights.

Maryann Mott writes in the National Geographic News about Mike Duffey, of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, who followed the clues after he was assigned to investigate the problem full-time four years ago. He knew the dead dogs weren’t strays, because the pads of their feet and their nails were not worn down by life on the streets. He started checking the lost-and-stolen-animal reports at the humane society and says, “We found that a lot of the dogs found in these desert dumping areas were in fact, at one time, [reported] stolen. So we began looking for a connection.”
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